I'm not talking the airport down. Check my post history. I'm consistently positive. I'm just saying it's bad luck for the airport to have suffered 3 bad news stories this year after a couple of very positive years. I didn't say it was the aiport's fault, just noted that it had been a worse year than the previous couple. If you want to show me some figures or evidence that the opposite is true then I'll happily withdraw the point.

Ash wrote:The sad failure of Thomas Cook is a far larger blow to Bristol Airport than it is to Cardiff.

I don't get your point. How is it CWL's fault if an airline fails? CWL wasn't to blame for the failure of Flybe or Thomas Cook. The fact that passenger numbers at Cardiff continue to rise despite airline failures suggest CWL is very resiliant.

Why do we talk ourselves down all the time?

This isn’t strictly true. Although Bristol will lose more passengers the impact will be felt harder at Cardiff due to the overall percentage of passengers they carried from Cardiff

It’s been unofficially open for several weeks, and what a big improvement. The link now from the A48 up to the M4 is desperate. That won’t just make access to the airport and Barry easier from the west, it’ll take traffic away from Culver / Port Road too.

The road up to the M4 really needs to happen now, also the plans for a Dinas Powes bypass which would cut travel times from the south of city to Barry and the airport which would make a massive difference.

Looks like Flybe is going to be saved. I seriously hope the government is not putting money into this and as for the repayment plan over air passenger duty, I'm sure every business would like such luxury.

Hopefully Loganair will take over the Edinburgh root like they did with Glasgow, Flybe kept Edinburgh as it was profitable. KLM does very well out of Cardiff, perhaps Air France could look at taking the Paris route and that would open up even more connectivity with their long-haul connections. Again, Aer Lingus taking over Dublin to feed into their long-haul connections would be ideal. These three routes were all profitable. Routes like Belfast City, Cork and Jersey, less clear who would or could realistically replace these.

Important to note that Eastern Airways is still trading as they only flew under the Flybe banner from Cardiff to Angelsey and Teesside.